The Daily Cartoon and Live Briefing: Monday, May 11, 2026

Notably: Page five, above the fold, of the May 11, 1902 New York Times, toward the end of the the American genocide of Filipinos, one reads the following headline: Filipinos Are Hard People to Teach.” Below that, a subhead: “They Still Talk of Their Dreams of Independence.” Several paragraphs down, we read: “In many a town last September there were public demonstrations to greet the arrival of the American teachers who had come to bring light and knowledge of the West to the poor, oppressed Filipino. Night schools were started with rooms full of men eager to learn to read and write and speak the English tongue. But alas, it meant work and study, and there have been fallings off in the schools. One night school started in Cebu with sixty. In two weeks there were six who did learn to use the language very readily. This exemplifies a trait of the people. It is only the bright, smart ones who forge ahead. You rarely hear of such a character as the “Poler,” the “Grind,” or the other terms used to distinguish a plodder in the American universities. Those Filipinos who have had education in Manila under the Jesuits, those towns which have fair schools, cannot understand the policy of the Americans in desiring to send teachers to places where the people are ignorant. “What’s the use? Those people are ignorant and don’t know anything?” they say to Superintendent and teacher.” Oddly enough, my second father, when he was a Jesuit priest (he had long abandoned the priesthood by the time he met my widowed mother in 1978) had been a teacher in the Philippines, though I don’t recall him ever referring to Filipinos as difficult to teach. I often remembering complaining about how difficult it was to read American newspapers. I can see why.

Life is big enough for any story. I walk in the street with tears running down my face; I walk in a world of sales racks and flavored refreshments, marching crowds, broken streets, and steam pouring through the cracks. Jackhammers, roaring buses, women striding into traffic, knifelike in their high, sharp heels, past windows full of faces, products, bright admonishments, light, and dust. Slouching employees smoke in doorways; waiters clear outdoor tables. Eaters lounge before empty plates, legs spread, working their phones. Flocks of pigeons, a careful rat. At this newsstand, I know the proprietor; he catches my eye and tactfully registers my tears with the slightest change in his expression. Deep in his cave of fevered headlines and gaudy faces, he shivers with cold and fights to breathe; his lungs are failing as he sells magazines and bottled water, mints and little basil plants. We greet each other; I don’t say but I think, Hello, brother. And life rushes by. On the corner people play instruments and sing. Sullen men sit with filthy dogs and beg. In the subway a hawk-nosed boy with dyed, stringy, somehow elegant hair squats and manipulates crude puppets to sexy music amid a weird tableau of old toys. There is something sinister; he looks up with a pale, lewd eye. An older woman laughs too loudly, trying to get his attention. A beggar looks at me and says, “Don’t be so sad. It’ll get better by and by.” And I believe him. There will be something else for me. If not here, then in London, I can feel it. I am on the ground and bleeding, but I will stand up again. I will sing songs of praise.

–From Mary Gaitskill’s “This Is Pleasure,” The New Yorker, July 8, 2019.

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